Arthritis and Musculoskeletal Alliance
Influencing policy and care together for best lifelong musculoskeletal health
by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
A few days ago the Chief Medical officer, Chris Whitty, published his report for 2023 entitled health in an ageing society. I’m sure many of you will immediately seek out the MSK related content, skimming straight to the section on early diagnosis of osteoporosis or the case studies on ESCAPE-pain and MSK hubs. However, those are not the bits I think are most important for us.
The big take away message for me is the section on multi-morbidity.…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
ARMA is in the process of writing up the report of our inquiry into the impact of deprivation on MSK health inequalities. Of course, this is not the only factor that impacts on MSK health inequalities. Age, sex, ethnicity and a range of other factors intersect to give the highly unequal picture we see. So I was delighted to be invited to speak at a Kings Fund conference on women’s health.
MSK proved to be an excellent introduction to the day with many parallels with the rest of the agenda.…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
I have just finished facilitating one of our regional meetings bringing together stakeholders to talk about what’s happening at the local level with MSK services. It’s clear there is a lot of willingness to do something, despite a lot of confusion around who leads on MSK at an ICS level. A lot of questions were asked at the meeting. Where are the MSK targets being reported? Are the ICBs aware of what’s happening? We’ve got a case to introduce a Fracture Liaison Service, but how do we get anyone to listen?…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
Everyone working in or living with MSK conditions will have been delighted to read the interim report of the Major Conditions Strategy. MSK is recognised as a “major condition”. It has its own section alongside cancer, dementia, mental health and others. The same size, the same structure, the same status. It finally puts MSK where it belongs. Or should do.
There is so much to welcome in the document. The focus on prevention and personalisation. On treatments in the community and alignment of physical and mental health.…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
I’ve been talking a lot about self-management recently. We’ve had conflicting views through our MSK health inequalities inquiry – does it help address inequalities or exacerbate them?
It seems that it partly depends on what you mean by self-management. One of our lived experience partners said, “self-management is code for you’re on your own.” There is some suspicion amongst both people living with MSK conditions and health care professionals that this is the case, which can lead to resistance to uptake in the NHS.…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
My own local ICS, like many others, has the following ambition in its current strategic plan: “To eradicate the gap in healthy life expectancy between NECN ICS and the rest of the country”. The strategy contains one mention of improving access to MSK services and two local examples of work to achieve this. It’s not enough, and here’s why.
On 1 June, the Office for Health Improvement and Disparities (OHID) published a report on understanding the drivers of healthy life expectancy.…
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Integrated Care Boards have been in place for almost a year now. Over that year, we have seen the profile and status of MSK health rising at a national level. It is difficult to tell if that profile is reflected at an ICB level. If not, then all the national profile in the world won’t make a difference to people with MSK conditions. That’s why ARMA is making local MSK services a priority with a new project, and we need you to get involved.…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
I’m delighted to be writing, for the second time this year, about MSK getting a high profile in Government policy. Two months ago I wrote about the Major Conditions Strategy, and now we have a budget which included funding for MSK. By including the word musculoskeletal in such a major annual economic event, the speech has underlined the vital importance of MSK health to our country and our economy.
The budget included three initiatives for MSK:
This is a lot of money, although given the numbers of people with MSK conditions, nowhere near as much as it sounds.…
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I am writing this on International Women’s Day, thinking about the many different facets of inequalities in musculoskeletal health. Deprivation is one of the most significant drivers, which is why we have chosen to focus our inquiry on deprivation. However, we know there are other factors including ethnicity, age, sex and gender.
Women are disproportionately affected by MSK conditions: 35% of women compared with 28% of men experience an MSK condition, (Versus Arthritis). So I was pleased that the Women’s Health Ambassador recently organised a roundtable about the women’s health strategy for England and MSK health.…
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by Sue Brown, CEO ARMA
Last month the Government announced a new major conditions strategy. In the past ARMA’s response to such an announcement would be “what about MSK? That’s a major condition contributing hugely to the burden of disease in England.” Not this time.
I will admit to being surprised to read the list of six conditions included and find musculoskeletal disorders was one of them. Pleasantly surprised. Finally, in this one document at least, MSK seems to have parity with other conditions.…
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